Exodus 2022 (33 page)

The meaning of this—the obvious implication—sank in, and despair settled in Ella’s mind like a dull, throbbing pain. She slumped against Joe and watched the city blur by, fireworks exploding here and there along the horizon.

Joe nuzzled Ella and whispered, “I love you, Ella.” She pressed harder against his chest and Joe smelled the fear flowing from the pores in her skin. Felt the dampness on her face. New tears. “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Joe remembered what Ella had told him about the shooting at the mall, how she’d felt invisible—as if the gunman couldn’t see her at all. Joe wished with all his heart that that was the case now. That Beck’s men would take him away and ignore her. Leave her. Turn a blind eye to her presence and let her go in peace. He felt responsible for the situation they were in and would at that moment have given anything for her safety.

He sat there, trying to think, trying to control his own fear and fatigue long enough to assess the situation. His head hurt—a sharp, cutting pain behind his eyes, as if he’d been staring at the noonday sun. And his hands shook still. He could feel the tremors even with his wrists tight behind his back. The shake was constant now.

And then the pain around his eyes subsided—just a little—and he felt oddly comforted.

A sudden flood of warmth spread outward from his core to his hands and feet, fingers and toes, piercing his somber mood like a blade of luxuriantly hot sunlight in a cold room.

There’s someone else here. With us.

He could feel it. Another presence in the darkness.

Mia.

It
was
Mia. Mia, finding him. Connecting with him, yet again. Not understanding his predicament in the least, but sensing his terror and wanting to reassure.

Joe shut his eyes and let the connection stabilize. He didn’t think about
why
Mia had come, or what her arrival in his mind might mean. He didn’t have the energy to grapple with it.

He simply let the warmth flow, accepting Mia’s offer of comfort with gratitude. Without reservation.

After a long minute, another feeling hit him:

I’m not the only one suffering here.

Mia was comforting him. Worried about him. Filled with regret over what she had done to him. That was all true. But she was also deeply worried for her own tribe, for the tasks she had yet to accomplish.

And then he heard it, clear and bright and excruciating:
ping… ping…ping
. Relentless and unending. A sort of torture lasting years.

Joe breathed, seeing now into Mia’s mind. Perceiving her fears and worries just as she had perceived his.

He looked and watched, and understood.

Mia has her message to send. But she can’t send it until the sonar goes off. Everything hinges on that. Everything.

He understood. It was like there was an avalanche ready to start. Ready to rumble. Ready to release a billion tons of kinetic energy and thunder down from the mountaintops.

But it can’t start until Mia sends her message. And she can’t send her message because the pinging is blocking her voice, like a wall.

He felt her despair, as she felt his. She wasn’t giving up, not by any means. She and her pod were swimming on, farther into the open sea. But time was running out.

ADMIRAL HOUGHTON SAT ALONE
in his cabin aboard the
Nimitz
.

It was dark now, and the great ship rested in its deep-water moorage beneath the skyscrapers of Seattle, 102,000 tons of steel slowly cooling after a long, hot Fourth of July.

The ship was quiet, and if Admiral Houghton had ventured onto the deck, he could have seen fireworks bursting over the harbor and heard the excited murmur of spectators along Alaskan Way. He remained in his cabin instead.

He’d been invited to a barbecue and celebration at the Governor’s Mansion in Olympia, but had asked an aide to send his regrets. Explain that he wasn’t feeling well.

He
wasn’t
feeling well. That was a fact. Wasn’t feeling like himself at all. And he wanted to think.

He lay back on his bed, wondering about the priest and his girlfriend, about the odd tingling in his arm, and about the dream.

The dream.

Houghton couldn’t remember the last time he’d dreamed. He’d read somewhere that everyone dreamed, every night, and he guessed that was probably true. But he rarely remembered his own dreams, and he had certainly never experienced one so vivid. So real.

The line.

The wall, slowly opening at the back of the church.

The line. On fire.

He hadn’t thought about his childhood church in years. Decades, maybe. Why was he dreaming about that now? And what was the significance of the line—a minor feature in a building he barely remembered?

Why had he heard the sonar pulse in his dream, and why had it caused him such pain?

He lay there, trying to relax, analyzing the security implications of Joe Stanton’s bizarre request with one part of his mind, and puzzling over his personal reaction to things with another.

There was no mistaking it. He’d felt something when he’d shaken the priest’s hand. Something powerful. A sort of jolt that had scrambled his thoughts and shoved him back in time, to a Sunday morning long ago. To something he’d witnessed with his own eyes.

I remember now
, he thought.
I was close…close to seeing… what?

The line had pointed the way. The line. A blade of light singing with energy.

He’d almost seen something that day, caught a glimpse of something beautiful—like sunlit fields spied through a far-off window.

And he’d heard music.

Music not meant for human ears.

I almost saw it.

Almost heard it.

I was almost there.

There had been magic in the church that day. Magic and power. And the memory of it now slowed his breathing and quieted his mind, like clear water flowing over smooth stones.

At last he settled into sleep.

After a time, though, the
ping
…
ping
…
ping
began in his sleeping brain, faintly at first—an annoying earworm—then getting louder. His eyelids twitched and jumped in the dark.

THE BELL 412 SETTLED
like a great, buzzing insect onto
Marauder
’s aft helipad. It was dark, and the breeze funneling over and around the ship’s sleek, muscular hull was brisk and unrelenting.

The ship was entering Trincomali Channel, sticking to the same course it had followed from Alaska, now bearing south-southeast through the Canadian Gulf Islands, toward the US border. It glided forward, nimble and elegant. A work of art. A fantastic piece of sculpture masquerading as a ship.

Within the hour
Marauder
would turn due south, then gradually steer southwest, passing Victoria and the southern end of Vancouver Island and heading west into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The shriek of the Bell’s engine faded as Beck and Ring made their way across the deck. The helicopter would refuel, then immediately lift off again and return to Bellingham to retrieve Collins and crew.

Beck barreled downstairs from the helipad, leaving Ring far behind and scaring the shit out of everyone he passed.

He was a wreck. Hair disheveled, clothes rumpled and stained. His body reeking still of sweat and urine and vomit.

It was the look on his face, though, that made people jump out of the way. Made eyes snap open and jaws drop.

He looked deranged. Crazy. A fierce, gone-around-the-bend gleam in his eye that said he was a nanosecond away from exploding and breaking someone’s neck.

Beck found Heintzel at her desk in the infirmary. At her computer. Staring at her screen, typing thoughtfully.

She glanced up to see who was there and forgot about her work.

“Jesus. What happened to you?” she asked, getting to her feet.

“Didn’t sleep well,” Beck replied. “I need something.”

Heintzel squinted at him. Wrinkled her nose as she caught a whiff of the potpourri of odors wafting off his skin and clothes.

“You look like you’ve been in a war,” she said. “What happened?”

“Fucked-up sleep. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Heintzel steered him toward the nearest exam room. A tiny space packed with shelves and medical apparatus and a narrow bed.

“Have a seat, and let me check you out.”

She shut the door. Turned and got some hand sanitizer from a wall-mounted dispenser. When she turned back, Beck was inches away, murder in his eyes.

He grabbed her wrist with his right hand—a move startling in its speed and ferocity—brought her arm slowly up to eye level, and began to bend it back. Stopped.

Heintzel could feel his strength. Sensed that he could snap her wrist like a twig if he wanted to.

“Andrea,” he said softly. “I don’t want an exam. I don’t want to be checked out. Okay?”

She swallowed. Held his gaze. “Okay.”

“What I want, is something to keep me going. Keep me awake and sharp and alert for twenty-four more hours.”

She regarded him with concern. “But you’re running ragged now. You should sleep.”

Beck tightened his grip on her wrist, and the fire in his eyes intensified. “I
can’t
sleep, Andrea. Not right now.”

“Okay,” Heintzel gasped. “Let me see what I can do.”

Beck released her hand and slumped to a sitting position on the edge of the exam bed, his eyes dulling visibly. He looked like a wounded animal.

Heintzel massaged her wrist, tears in her eyes from the pain, and began assembling what she needed on a little metal tray: alcohol swabs. A syringe. Two glass vials from a minifridge.

A minute later the concoction was ready.

Heintzel rolled Beck’s shirtsleeve out of the way and swabbed his bicep.

“Do you want to know what I’m giving you?” she asked.

Beck shook his head and said, voice flat, “No. I just want to know it’s the best you have.”

Heintzel nodded.

Beck said, in the same unemotional tone, “If I find out it’s not, I’ll come back down here and kill you.”

Heintzel made no reply. Just steadied her hand as she finished the injection.

Andrea Heintzel had known Beck for years. Worked with him. Treated his injuries. Advised him on all manner of medical issues and willingly participated in procedures—certain prisoner interrogations and the like—of questionable legality. She was part of Beck’s inner circle and enjoyed the power, authority and pay that came with that. She knew Beck for the charming, ruthless, volatile, egotistical leader that he was. She’d watched him verbally eviscerate employees and heard stories of far worse things. But she had never felt personally afraid of him. Until now.

She wiped the injection site on Beck’s arm with a clean swab and applied a Band-Aid.

Looking up, she found his eyes dull still, as if the wounded animal had retreated to the back of its den and was hiding there, resting, gathering strength for the next outburst.

He’s not looking at me
, she thought.

But then he was looking at her. And the little hairs on the back of her neck lifted and her hands shook.

There’s something wrong with his eyes.

It was true. There was something wrong—with the way the irises looked, with the pupils. With the cant of his head also. It was a demeanor, an aura, a vibe, that—just for a moment, just for an instant—made her feel that she was looking at someone else entirely. A different person. A stranger. A madman. A psychopath. She could feel it: madness wafting off his body as potently as the horrible stench.

Beck got to his feet. “Collins is bringing the priest here. To you. Reinstall his thought-capture hardware and fire it up. We’re going to need him.”

“Okay.”

Beck exited the infirmary without another word.

Beck showered and put on clean clothes, pleased with how he felt, with the fresh energy surging through his veins. He was thinking clearly again and his headache had subsided to a faint, inconsequential twinge just beneath his scalp. The horror he’d felt in the restroom at the airport, and again on the helicopter, seemed like a distant memory. Like something he’d dreamed.

He smiled as he exited his cabin.

Clearly, whatever Heintzel had given him was working.

It occurred to Beck as he walked, as he headed for his rendezvous with Ring and his father and sister, that his mood didn’t make sense.

His father and sister had come to his ship unannounced, barged into
his
War Room and ordered
his
staff around while he was away from the vessel.

I should be enraged
, he thought.
Incensed. Livid.

But I’m not.

Instead of rage, he felt an odd eagerness. A lustful exuberance.

He paused midstride, midcorridor, wondering at this and questioning himself. Questioning his mood and attitude.

The hesitation lasted only moments before the greedy, eager, lustful side won out and he continued on his way.

Still, there was doubt. A little voice in his head, warning him, suggesting, meekly, that he was becoming a sort of passenger or spectator in his own body. That the sick, afflicted part of his mind was growing stronger by the hour.

He ignored the little voice and strode on. He didn’t know what was going to happen after he entered the War Room. That was a fact. And his mood was split now, evenly, sickeningly, between elation and terror.

IT WAS THE DIAMONDS
that turned Beck’s father into a believer.

Diamonds on black sand.

Diamonds wet from a receding tide, sparkling and flashing in early morning sun.

The diamonds made Winston Beck set down his scotch and lean forward in his chair, closer to Ring’s monitor and the breathtaking images populating the screen.